My House of Horrors

“There is a child by the name of Jiang Ming who’s Jiang Ming’s child?” Chen Ge did not expect to be given such surprising news with his casual question.

“Yes, I didn’t think much of it at the time. I just thought it was weird until the boy suddenly called Jiang Ming ‘dad’.” The woman with the long hair elicited a bitter smile. “I had not heard Jiang Ming mention having a family before. That day, we had a horrible dinner. Before we parted, I asked him what his relationship with that child was. For some reason, he got mad at me and told me to stop asking random questions.

“Was I being too unreasonable? If the boy wasn’t his, if he’d adopted him, I could fully understand that, but he refused to say anything. How was I supposed to take in all that?”

“It shouldn’t be his biological son. Why would his own child share his name?” Chen Ge was not there to listen to someone else’s love story. Before waiting for the woman to continue, he asked, “What does the child look like? Is there anything physically different about him?”

“The child is quite pitiable. He is deaf in both ears, and I believe he is forbidden to leave the house. His vocabulary is very limited.” The woman sounded worried. “Jiang Ming comes from a wealthy family, but I don’t think they plan to send the boy to receive any treatment. During dinner, whenever I raised the topic of the boy, Jiang Ming would get angry at me.”

“When you visited his home, did you hear Jiang Ming tell the boy anything? Things like altars, mud statuettes, curses, or anything like that?”

“During dinner, Jiang Ming locked the boy in his bedroom. He appeared to have something against the boy communicating with the outside world.”

“Okay, I understand.” Chen Ge nodded. “One last question, what is Jiang Ming’s address? I wish to visit him in person.”

“How about I give you his phone number?”

“These things are better said in person. Things get muddled in the phone.”

At Chen Ge’s insistence, the woman finally gave him Jiang Ming’s address.

…

When Chen Ge left the hospital, it was already afternoon. He arranged all the information that he had gotten in the sickroom. The many scenarios that he had experienced hid a lot of different information. What had appeared useless now became clues for him to look for the ghost fetus. If the truth was a giant puzzle, what Chen Ge was doing now was piecing the puzzle together.

He took a cab back to New Century Park. After ensuring that there were no issues at the haunted house, he took the taxi to Eastern Jiujiang again. The countdown had already started, so there was no time to lose. When Chen Ge arrived at Eastern Jiujiang’s White Dragon Tunnel, it was already dark.

“When I first came here, I found many bad things hidden in the surrounding woods, but this time, it’s much quieter.”

He waited until 8 pm before he dragged the heavy backpack into the tunnel. The abandoned tunnel was deserted. The ground was littered with rotten tree branches and trash. Chen Ge did not open the light. He placed his hand on the cold tunnel wall and slowly walked into it. Light disappeared behind him, and he entered a world dominated by darkness.

“Is anyone home? The ghost fetus is coming alive, and this might be the first place he attacks. Before that happens, I wish to share all of the information I know with you so that you can be prepared.”

Chen Ge had not been so desperate to run into a ghost in his life. He had gone there to look for the Red Specter from the car accident and her son. Of all the Red Specters that Chen Ge had met, the son was the most unique one. Most door pushers had their door inside a certain building, and that building became a bridge that connected the real world to the blood world. But the door pusher in White Dragon Tunnel was different. When he died, his body had been stuck inside the car window. The fire in the car had melted his body to the car window, and the door that he pushed open was inside his body!

After entering the world behind the door many times, there was one thing that Chen Ge was certain of. It was easy to enter the world behind the door, but to exit it, one needed the door pusher’s permission. The School of the Afterlife was a four-star scenario. After being led unwillingly into the world behind its door, Chen Ge had been worried about this issue.

If the ghost fetus ambushed him and dragged him behind his door, Chen Ge would be dead. To avoid that from happening, the best solution that Chen Ge could think of was to stay with the Red Specter from the car accident and her son. That way, even if he was trapped in the world behind the door, he could escape easily through the door inside the son’s body.

The reason the shadow had gone to the tunnel was probably because he wanted to gain access to this unique door as well, but the boy had avoided him every time. However, it was also because of the shadow that the Red Specter from the car accident and her son did not dare wander away from the tunnel. Once they left, bad things would happen.

Leaning against the wall, Chen Ge reached the spot where he had first met the Red Specter from the car accident. Changes slowly appeared in the tunnel. The air turned wet, and even with his Yin Yang Vision, the things around him became blurry like there was a dark fog rolling out from the deepest part of the tunnel. A scratching sound echoed in his ears like the sound of many bugs crawling on the wall. Chen Ge stopped moving.

He’s here.

In the dark tunnel, a pair of red eyes slowly opened. Following a shrill wail of mercy, a large ‘spider’ appeared. Six carved appendages pierced deeply into the wall, and the enormous body was filled with wailing faces and in the middle of all the faces was the head of a small boy. Black and red tattoos crawled on the boy’s face, and his bloodshot eyes looked down on Chen Ge. There was another Red Specter sitting on the spider’s back. She wore a tattered dress, but she looked at Chen Ge relatively kindly.

The boy seems to have gotten stronger.

The door of White Dragon Tunnel was inside the boy’s body. A normal Red Specter was not his match. If he ran into someone whom he could not win, he could open the door inside his body and escape. No wonder even the shadow could not do anything to him. But this kind of special power was gained after an unimaginably painful sacrifice.

“We’ve cooperated before, at Li Wan City. That time, your mom came with me. She’s the best witness.” Chen Ge wanted to build a bond first. After realizing that the woman did not have a bad impression of him, he continued. “Last time, we worked together to kill the shadow, but in reality, the shadow had long separated himself from the ghost fetus. Now, no one knows what the ghost fetus is, but one thing’s for sure—he is very scary and is capable of killing all of us very easily.”